Elena Cottini

Is your job bad for your health? Explaining differences in health at work across gender

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate how different measures of working conditions affect the health at work of female and male workers of 15 European countries. Particular attention is paid to the gender dimension of this relationship. Design/methodology/approach - Using the European Working Conditions Survey from 2005 the author describes differences in health at work by gender accounting for both psychosocial and physical hazards at work. A Probit OLS estimator is used to obtain the relevant estimates and endogeneity problems have been properly addressed. Findings - Results show that controlling for a broad selection of personal and work attributes, working conditions are associated with more work related health problems – both physical and mental. Importantly, some evidence is found in support of a different pattern by gender. With respect to mental health at work, males suffer more from high work demands/low job autonomy compared to females. Task segregation may play a role in explaining these differences. A less clear pattern across gender is found with respect to physical health problems at work. When the endogeneity of working conditions is taken into account, results are confirmed and show that the effect of working conditions on health at work is under-estimated when endogeneity is not accounted for. Originality/value - The papers findings contribute to shed more light on the controversial analysis between working conditions and health according to gender.

HEALTH AT WORK AND LOW PAY: A EUROPEAN PERSPECTIVE*

This study investigates the relationship between health, working conditions and pay in Europe. In particular, we measure health at work using self-assessed indicators for overall, as well as physical and mental health, using the 2005 wave of the EWCS (European Working Conditions Survey) for 15 EU countries. We find that, controlling for personal characteristics, (adverse) working conditions are associated with poor health status – both physical and mental. Low pay plays a role, mainly for men and when interacted with working conditions, suggesting that stigma and deprivation effects may be correlated with health at work. We also account for the potential endogeneity arising from workers sorting by firms and job types with different working conditions, and provide evidence of a causal effect of (adverse) working conditions and (low) pay on health at the workplace.

Employment insecurity and employees’ health in Denmark

We use register data for Denmark (IDA) merged with the Danish Work Environment Cohort Survey (1995, 2000, and 2005) to estimate the effect of perceived employment insecurity on perceived health for a sample of Danish employees. We consider two health measures from the SF-36 Health Survey Instrument: a vitality scale for general well-being and a mental health scale. We first analyse a summary measure of employment insecurity. Instrumental variables-fixed effects estimates that use firm workforce changes as a source of exogenous variation show that 1 additional dimension of insecurity causes a shift from the median to the 25th percentile in the mental health scale and to the 30th in that of energy/vitality. It also increases by about 6 percentage points the probability to develop severe mental health problems. Looking at single insecurity dimensions by naïve fixed effects, uncertainty associated with the current job is important for mental health. Employability has a sizeable relationship with health and is the only insecurity dimension that matters for the energy and vitality scale. Danish employees who fear involuntary firm internal mobility experience worse mental health.

Is it the way you live or the job you have? Health effects of lifestyles and working conditions

Abstract This paper investigates the role of lifestyles (smoking, drinking and obesity) and working conditions (physical hazards, no support from colleagues, job worries and repetitive work) on health. Three alternative systems of simultaneous multivariate probit equations are estimated, one for each health measure: an indicator of self-assessed health, an indicator of physical health, and an indicator of work-related mental health problems, using Danish data for 2000 and 2005. We find that while lifestyles are significant determinants of self-assessed health, they play a minor role for our indicators of physical health and mental health. The effect of lifestyles seems to be dominated by the effect of adverse working conditions, which significantly worsen health. This result is robust for all health dimensions considered.